As a yog-sothothkin, I will not argue against your marginalisation of my identity.

I will, however, keep it in mind while I am digesting your soul.

But you already have and have not yet eaten my soul, so what's the point?_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

My dislike of otherkin tends to be because of their appropriation of trans* lingo

I'd be much more concerned with the LGBT and SJ community itself, where it seems the latest thing has been attaching a laundry list of terms to yourself in an attempt to gain recognition or special snowflake status.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone use gender* or *romantic or *sexual (ignoring the standard homo/hetero/bi/trans) inappropriately or incorrectly on emptyClosets, I'd be able to singlehandedly fund NASA. Ditto for a bunch of major blogs on SJ stuff.

Seems like this abuse is slightly more problematic (especially considering it's coming from our own community) than the relatively miniscule Otherkin community._________________Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while, I think I see my brother coming, riding many a mile.

Even now you are living through every iteration of your fate, and I shall thusly reprocess you for longer than eternity.

You do not have to believe. In fact, those who do finally grasp the scope of this process ... something breaks inside them. My intention is not to outright break you, unless it serves some purpose. On another appendage, it would not warrant my concern. You are to me as your toenail is to you.

Of course I get it -- it's one of the advantages of having no SAN left _________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

My dislike of otherkin tends to be because of their appropriation of trans* lingo

I'd be much more concerned with the LGBT and SJ community itself, where it seems the latest thing has been attaching a laundry list of terms to yourself in an attempt to gain recognition or special snowflake status.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone use gender* or *romantic or *sexual (ignoring the standard homo/hetero/bi/trans) inappropriately or incorrectly on emptyClosets, I'd be able to singlehandedly fund NASA. Ditto for a bunch of major blogs on SJ stuff.

Seems like this abuse is slightly more problematic (especially considering it's coming from our own community) than the relatively miniscule Otherkin community.

Maybe because I mainly interact with other trans people through about two groups on Facebook, I don't really see any of that. Also I've heard accusations of "special snowflake" been leveled at basically everyone who doesn't have a very well-known orientation or just at non-binary people in general, so I'm kind of wary about its use. If you had some sort of example I could see if you're talking about something I'd agree with or not. Like one example of what I consider to be an abuse of "SJ" terms is calling words like "idiot" ableist, that they shouldn't be used because they discriminate against intellectually disabled people, based on the fact that it was a scientific or medical term about a hundred years ago. But... the word has pretty much become a generic insult, you'd yell it at everyone from the car that cut you off to the peer you dislike to yourself when you realise you forgot your USB. And it's not just "idiot", it's a whole host of other words too with extremely flimsy justifications for why they're allegedly ableist. I really dislike that people have gone from rightly discussing why actual slurs shouldn't be used to seemingly picking arbitrary words to demonise and scream at anyone who uses them. Fetch isn't going to happen, people aren't going to stop calling each othe "idiot" unless the language evolves naturally because we all decide we like a different insult better. You can't force people to give up a large chunk of their everyday vocabularies unless you provide a proper substitute.

Yeah, that whole thing annoys me a lot. It seems to be creeping into some of the groups I'm in, as opposed to just being in various Tumblrs which have enough good content I can put up with whatever they've decided is ableist today.

One should not have to describe your orientation with 4 words which don't exist in spellcheck. Seriously, I'm pretty sure pansexuality voids the last two anyways, seeing as pansexuality is essentially genderblind/sexblind and the last two are respectively attraction to trans* and selective bisexuality.

Also, the (IMO) ridiculous separation of romantic and sexual orientations. They have no definition in psychological literature so all they just lead to further confusion because everyone has a different definition of romance and a different idea of when romance crosses over into sexuality. And given that demi* infers the requirement of an emotional relationship, which I would have guessed as being a requirement of romance as it is.

It's seriously getting to the point where people are making threads because they're having difficulty picking out a label, not because they don't fit one but because they fit too many. We're getting to the point of Venn diagrams within Venn diagrams within even more Venn diagrams.

That's not to say we should get rid of labels that people are using, but people need to stop using them so arbitrarily.

Also metrosexual is a term that needs to die in a fire, like, now._________________Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while, I think I see my brother coming, riding many a mile.

Apart from the third one which I'm not sure what it might mean other than some sort of sexual attraction to women or people who look like women, I think it's more the fact that they're used together which is kind of odd. Like I could understand someone id-ing as "homoflexible" if they're mostly gay but occasionally hook up with the "opposite sex".

fritterdonut wrote:

One should not have to describe your orientation with 4 words which don't exist in spellcheck.

I really don't think that's a good argument considering "cissexism" isn't in the dictionary or spellcheck either.

fritterdonut wrote:

Seriously, I'm pretty sure pansexuality voids the last two anyways, seeing as pansexuality is essentially genderblind/sexblind and the last two are respectively attraction to trans* and selective bisexuality.

Ah, yeah, like I said it's the combination that's odd, not the individual parts.

fritterdonut wrote:

Also, the (IMO) ridiculous separation of romantic and sexual orientations. They have no definition in psychological literature so all they just lead to further confusion because everyone has a different definition of romance and a different idea of when romance crosses over into sexuality. And given that demi* infers the requirement of an emotional relationship, which I would have guessed as being a requirement of romance as it is.

I don't think the separation is ridiculous at all. It originated in asexual communities where aces were trying to describe how they still wanted to be in romantic-style relationships but didn't feel sexual attraction or a need for sex with their partner. Rather than saying "heterosexual without the sex" which while sort of accurate, doesn't really lend itself to a sense of community like "asexual" with an added romantic descriptor does. I don't think the fact that the line is blurry rather than definite is an argument against these terms, and pretty much every article from aces about romantic orientations states the fact that what one person considers romantic might seem platonic to another person. The labels are subjective, just like not everyone who uses "gay" to describe themselves wants the same thing.

As for demi-romantic, it means that one has to get to know someone quite well before they can form a crush, pretty much. And no, it's not like "oh I've known so-and-so for so long and now I finally see that they're cute because they adopt orphaned puppies!", a person who is demiromantic must get to know someone before forming a crush and desire to form a romantic relationship with that person. All these "demi-" words are is describing a pattern of attraction in a shorthand way, I really do not think people are trying to be "special snowflakes". Like, imagine if you could just say a word, instead of having to speak for half an hour to explain something. Most of the time, that's all what people who use demi-sexual and demi-romantic are after.

fritterdonut wrote:

It's seriously getting to the point where people are making threads because they're having difficulty picking out a label, not because they don't fit one but because they fit too many. We're getting to the point of Venn diagrams within Venn diagrams within even more Venn diagrams.

I think a lot of that isn't so much the fact that there's such a wide variety of labels than that in certain enviroments there's a lot of pressure to have a label, so instead of someone taking their time to explore how they feel it's like "oh no, I need to decide what I am STRAIGHT AWAY" and then the variety of labels becomes stressful because there's so much to sort through. As opposed to if people could just kind of hang on, hear other people's thoughts on their own identies and reasoning, reflect on how they feel and eventually think "Yeah, I think I'm ____, during these discussions I relate most closely to those people and it pretty much describes how I feel. ____ seems like a good label for now."

fritterdonut wrote:

That's not to say we should get rid of labels that people are using, but people need to stop using them so arbitrarily.

It's kind of funny because like I explained, I think the "arbitrariness" of it comes from there being so much pressure to have a label (or labels).

To HR and SamSally:
I never said people should stop making new words, or that the new words were difficult to learn. To quote my original post:

Quote:

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone use gender* or *romantic or *sexual (ignoring the standard homo/hetero/bi/trans) inappropriately or incorrectly on emptyClosets

And to quote my example:

Quote:

Orientation: demiromantic, pansexual, gynemimetophiliac, homoflexible

I gave my reasoning of why the above would be incorrect, or at least odd, usage, given the combination.

To Ennis:

Quote:

Apart from the third one which I'm not sure what it might mean other than some sort of sexual attraction to women or people who look like women, I think it's more the fact that they're used together which is kind of odd. Like I could understand someone id-ing as "homoflexible" if they're mostly gay but occasionally hook up with the "opposite sex".

Yes, I wasn't trying to say that the terms themselves don't make sense. It's the combination that doesn't make sense - and I see combinations like this all the time.

Quote:

Ah, yeah, like I said it's the combination that's odd, not the individual parts.

I was never trying to argue the individual parts were odd, as per my response to HR and Samsally. I was arguing that people keep using them wrong by chaining together ones that don't work. I'll concede on the spellcheck and demi* arguments. Although oddly enough my spellcheck does have cissexism, although it doesn't have cissexist, so I may have added it at some point?

Quote:

I think a lot of that isn't so much the fact that there's such a wide variety of labels than that in certain enviroments there's a lot of pressure to have a label, so instead of someone taking their time to explore how they feel it's like "oh no, I need to decide what I am STRAIGHT AWAY" and then the variety of labels becomes stressful because there's so much to sort through. As opposed to if people could just kind of hang on, hear other people's thoughts on their own identies and reasoning, reflect on how they feel and eventually think "Yeah, I think I'm ____, during these discussions I relate most closely to those people and it pretty much describes how I feel. ____ seems like a good label for now."

This is definitely an issue. I'd draw a parallel to the way some people people call themselves bisexual, despite being completely homosexual, because they aren't yet comfortable labeling themselves as homosexual, much to the chagrin of people who are bisexual and then have to deal with people telling us we don't exist. There's definitely a pressure to label yourself early on, ironically coming from within the LGBT movement itself, it seems.

Quote:

It wasn't already dead? Damn.

Unfortunately not.

So yes, in conclusion: I don't have a problem with labels, just with giant chains of labels that conflict with each other or don't make sense.

Also, 3v1, no fair D:_________________Hangman, hangman, hold it a little while, I think I see my brother coming, riding many a mile.

"Well, back in my day the men were men. And the women were men. Even the little children were men!"_________________The older I get, the more certain I become of one thing. True and abiding cynicism is simply a form of cowardice.

'We got to the gallery' is temporarily unavailable, due to the exhausting legal dispute with Penguin books. UK copyright law changes on June 1st, to allow an acception for parody and satire, so after that date I will have a better idea of what to do with the book. I believe it needs to reach it's audience.
I was planning to create a petition, but for legal reasons my solicitor has advised me against doing so for the time being.